I love the Rachel Maddow show and I am proud Episcopalian, so when Rachel interviewed Bishop Gene Robinson - the internationally known Gay bishop, whose confirmation rocked the Anglican world, it was must see TV for me.
Now I hope this doesn't open up too many woulds of the Rick Warren debacle, but I thought both of them did a great job.
Rachel begins with a semi long piece on Warren and why we shouldn't like him -what's he's said and what he's denied.
She then describes the pre-inauguration event and introduces +Robinson as the person giving that invocation.
She asked +Robinson right away about his public critique of the Warren choice, to which he responded that he's permitted to disagree with the PEOTUS and that Obama is holding true to his promise to be a leader of all the US and to have all voices represented.
Rachel asked if +Robinson's invitation was not connected to Warren's invitation and the Bishop stated that he met Obama during the NH primaries and worked with him on Gay and Lesbian issues throughout the campaign.
The Bishop was invited to do the invocation and he and his partner were invited to the swearing in, the prayer breakfast and other private events.
Rachel did a quick recap of the Clinton administration and it's relationship to the Gay/Lesbian community and asked +Robinson what he thought the Obama administration would be like in that regard. The Bishop replied that the he thought the PEOTUS stood with the Gay and Lesbian community and as a spirtual man he recognized that no one had a bigger tent than Jesus and he thought Obama's vision for the country was similar -to include and respect all.
She finished with the question about Obama's apparent change of heart/face on the issue of Gay marriage, which I thought +Robinson alluded to it being political.
Here is the video from MSNBC which is always a pain to embed, so I hope this works. (So the video is up but I can't get rid of the extraneous code)
Here it is from youtube
I'm still working on the detailed transcript - but as I mentioned she does ask him about Obama's previous stance on Gay Marriage which was reported at length yesterday, so I'm not going to rehash that.
Rachel played the teeth gnashing activist and +Robinson played the forgiving spiritual dude. I enjoyed the interview and will include a transcript soon.